This first McMaster-Ryerson Joint Policy Conference will interrogate the contemporary policy landscape in settler colonial Canada and offer Indigenous alternatives. Organized in two days around critical issues in political-legal and social policy areas, experts in their fields will define the scope of the challenges as well as opportunities to re-establish models of Indigenous governance. All of this while considering a federal government that advocates a “nation-to-nation” relationship and an era of “real change”. How much of this discourse is symbolic and how much is actually material? In addition to these questions, the Policy Conference hopes to cultivate an understanding of the methods, focus and goals for the emerging field of Indigenous Policy Studies among scholars, students and practitioners while privileging the local community.

hosted by: The McMaster Indigenous Research Institute (MIRI), Indigenous Studies Program – McMaster University and the Ryerson Centre for Indigenous Governance